Yay yay it's new-card day!

Every few months Decipher releases a new expansion set for Star Trek CCG 2nd Edition. And every time they do that, my gamer friends and I pre-order boxes of cards.

The latest set, Strange New Worlds, was released last week, so our boxes arrived in the country on Friday... I got mine today.

New card day is always a festive occasion for me... I like to make a real romantic time of it.

Today I had the flat to myself, so I put on a DVD of some Original Series episodes, made myself a special lunch (spaghetti bolognaise), poured myself a tall glass of orange juice and set about the task of opening the packs.

This is arguably the best part of new card day... I stack up all the unopened booster packs on one side. Then I take the first one... I use the special 'two-finger friction technique' to open the pack without damaging it or bending the cards. Then I lift the pack to my nose and take a deep breath... There's only one scent more appealing than that of a freshly opened booster.

I gently pour the cards out onto my freshly washed hand and begin the examination. After carefully reading each card I place it into a pile sorted by card-type (Dilemma, Equipment, Event, Interrupt, Mission, Personnel or Ship), place the empty packet into the box and move onto the next one.

Once all the packs are open it's time for step two. I split the Missions up by Quadrant and the Personnel and Ships by affiliation, then I sort all the cards into alphabetical order.

Then I get the file out. The file is the home to the first copy of every card I get. Of course, it's sorted using the Player System (by type and then alphabetically). Since I now have a whole bunch of new cards to squeeze in just about every single card in the file has to be taken out of it's sleeve, and one by one put back in the new sequence. This part usually takes about an hour and a half.

When that is done, I'm left with a pile of duplicates. I take out all the Rares for my trades file, and then insert what remains into my stock box (which is also alphabetised).

By this time most of the muscles in my back have gone into spasm, so it's time to lie back on the couch for a while while I bask in the afterglow.

I love new card day.

(Yes, you can say it: I belong it the realm of uber-geeks. The kind that regular geeks beat up and steal their lunch money. I'm okay with that.)